Posts Tagged ‘wireless networks’

I've been given a HUAWEI Mobile Broadband E173 USB 3g model. The USB modem contains a flash USB Storage segment storing a little install program dedicated to make the modem work fine on Microsoft Windows XP / Vista / 7 and probably other M$ OSes. I'm a long time DebianGNU / Linux user and as a free software enthusiast I ofcourse wanted to be able to use Vivacom's 3G USB Modem on my Linux powered notebook.

For those unaware in Bulgaria there are currently 3 major GSM network providers providing 3G internet this are;;;

VIVACOM – The ex Government ran national company BTC (Bulgarian Telecommunication Company)

M-Tel – The first GSM network provider that entered Bulgaria around year 1995

GLOBUL – The 3rd and last GSM mobile and net provider entered last and not so much used by Bulgarians today

Until today I had no experience in running any 3G modems on Linux, neither I had used the 3 networks 3G internet to determine which one is best, however I've been given for temporal use a VIVACOM 3G internet modem today so I proceeded to try installing it on my Debian host.

My Linux system is a bit strangely configured as I use wicd network connection manager -( wicd-gtk ) to manage wireless and LAN connections instead of the standard installed GNOME network manager – available through package ( network-manager-gnome ).

The reason I use wicd is not that it is so much better than GNOME network manger but rather for historical reasons because few years past I had impression it works better in connecting me to wireless networks. Another reason why I choosed wicd back then was the nice looking stats …

I tried plugging in the Vivacom USB 3G modem stick and checked in wicd to see if I can see a possibility to connect to the mobile opeartor 3G network but unfortunately nothing appeared.

Though the 3G adsl modem was unavailable straing in wicd, checking about it in the list of attached USB devices I could see it detected, e.g.:

This was at least a good sign pointing me to the thoughts that the modem is probably gonna work.

I did a quick Google search to see if other people succeded running the device on a Linux host and came across a few blog posts in Bulgarian explaining a "success story" on Ubuntu Linux through using a tweakened shell script – sakis3g. For more on how the script works and script download check out Sakis3g

Here is a quote from sakis3g's website describing the script:

It automagically setups your USB or Bluetooth™ modem, and may even detect operator settings. You should try it when anything else fails!

Sakis3g has different versions designed for for plenty of spacific hware architectures i.e. for (i386, amd64, armv4t, armv5t). There is also a version of the script which by the way contains a combination of bash shell scripting instruction and some binary exec data.

To run sakis3g on my laptop I did:

1. Download sakis3g

My notebook architecture is 64 bit so I download and used the amd64 version of the script;;;

The internet via the 3G connection is not blazing fast but good enough to check your mail or read some webpages. VIVACOM currently has different (traffic limited packages) for their 3G internet, I'm not sure which package exactly is the 3G USB stick modem but probably the "quick" internet connection that is now would slow down once the traffic limit is reached … Hope this post helps someone to configure 3G internet on VIVACOM in Debian and Ubuntu Linux. Though I've tested sakis3g on Debian it should work with no hassles on any other GNU Linux distribution that has bash installed.

After upgrading my sis’s notebook from Ubuntu 11.04 to Ubuntu 11.10 on her Acer Aspire 5736Z the default gnome wireless network manager started behaving oddly. The Network Manager did not show any networks, even though the network drivers showed that are loaded properly on the Linux host and using the normal commands like iwlist or iwconfig I could list and see the networks and even connect to a network.

As my sister is not a console geek like me it was necessery of course to have an easy way to connect herself to the Internet with nice GUI application. I personally love WICD Network Manager and as the default gnome manager was misbehaving I immediately installed her wicd. With wicd , the wireless networks were properly listed and there was no connection issues to the wireless networks, however the wicd system tray was missing and hence everytime she wanted to connect to a wireless network, she had to keep wicd-client running active in the Dock or run it manually every time on connect, when she had to change her physical location and connect to another wireless network. This of course is quite unhandy and gives her a bad image of Linux and I definitely want to make her love free software and GNU / Linux. Thus I want to give her a GNU / Linux she will be easy to use.

To make her more satisfied with her Ubuntu I googled around to see what causes the wicd systray to be missing after some research online I found out, its probably due to either wicd bug or some kind of interface changes in unity newer versions of Ubuntu. Some people online suggested a fix via changing values in gconf-editor but this work around by changing the values in gconf-editor:

'desktop' -> 'unity' -> 'panel'

I tried this suggested fix which was reported to work on Ubuntu 11.04 but the gconf registry suggested pathway was missing at all so this solution did not worked.

I further read some other suggested solution using wicd-client by invoking it with two args like so:

For my surprise running the script doesn’t immediately changed nothing and wicd wireless connectivity indicator was still missing from the tray. I thought it might need to reload gnome so I give it a restart and HOORAY! after the restart the WICD connected wireless strength show up, like you can see in the screenshot below 😉

Now hope this fix will, help out there experiencing the same issues to work around his wireless network connectivity issues 😉 Cheers.

Sometimes its useful to connect to Wireless Networks using console . The reasons for that might be many, one possible reason is to be able to debug, Wireless connection failures or simply omit the use of the many available GUI wifi connection programs.

As a first step before connecting in terminal is to look up for the wifi networks available for connection, this is done with cmd:

After connected to configure IP, Gateway and DNS from a DHCP server running on the WIFI router, dhclient cmd is used:

linux:~# /sbin/dhclient wlan0

2. Connecting to WEP 64bit / 128bit encrypted network

linux:~# /sbin/iwconfig wlan0 key 1234-5678-9101-1213

3. Connecting to WPA / WPA2 encrypted wifi network

To connect to WPA or WPA2 encrypted network its necessery to have installed wpasupplicant package. The name of the package might vary in different distributions on Debian and Ubuntu, the name of the package is wpasupplicant, on Fedora, CentOS and RHEL the package that has to be in is wpa_supplicant : After having installed the wpa_supplicant to connect to the network with ESSID namemagdanoz , wpa_passphrase is used first:

As you see in above command the secret password key is generated printed on the screen and then added to /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf , necessery to establish the wireless connection with wpa_supplicant with cmd:

-d wext instructs wpa_supplicant to use (Linux wireless extension driver).-B tells wpa_supplicant to background the connection to prevent the wireless connection to drop off, if the console / terminal from which it is launched gets closed.

In case of succesful connection with wpa_supplicant , once again IP, Gateway and DNS is configured fetching the settings from the wifi hotspot dhcp server:

linux:~# /sbin/dhclient wlan0

General information about the wireless network and info related to the established connection can be obtained with /usr/bin/iwconfig :

I’ve been struggling with fixing a nasty error with wicd network manager for about 2 hours. The exact error message I faced was:

Connection Failed: Bad Password

The issue occured after some suggested updates from the Ubuntu graphical update tool. The wireless network to which it was connected was a WPA-PSK (WPA2) Passphrase authentication. The network key was properly typed in and was working well on another system so the error Connection Failed: Bad Password made no sense.

There was nothing unusual in /var/log/wicd/wicd.log , that made me even more curious about what might be causing the error.After a lot of try outs and a lot of readings and tests I finally got the cause of the weird Bad Password errors produced by wicd

Weirdly enought, somehow the Ubuntu package update tool has installed the default gnome network-manager package. The installed network-manager package has mismatched somehow the way wicd connects to wireless networks and as a cause the wpa_supplicant binary was not properly invoked.

As a consequence of the network-manager being present on the system the wpa_supplicant process which made the exact connection to the wireless network was not launching in, the exact wpa_supplicant invocation missing was:

How to install Toshiba L40 B14 Wireless Adapter ( ID 0bda:8197 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8187B) on Ubuntu and Debian Linux I've been struggling for more than 10 hours to fix up issues on a Ubuntu Maverick-Meerkaat with a rtl8187B Wireless Adapter

The RTL8187B almost drove me mad. I could see the wlan0 which meant the kernel is detecting the device, I could even bring it up with ifconfig wlan0 up , however when I tried it in gnome's network-manager or wicd the wireless networks were not showing up.

Trying to scan for networks using the commands:

ubuntu:~# iwlist wlan0 scan

was also unsuccesful, trying to bring up and down the wireless wlan0 interface with:

ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 up

or

ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 down

Both returned the error:iwconfig: unknown command "up" and iwconfig: unknown command "down"

http://rtl-wifi.sourceforge.net/wiki/Main_Page (Returning empty page already a lot resource)http://rtl8187b.sourceforge.net (A fork of rtl-wifi.sourceforge.net which is still available though it was not usable)

Some of the other resources which most of the people recommended as a way to properly install the RTL8187B wireless driver on linux was located on the website:

http://datanorth.net/~cuervo/rtl8187b/ (Trying to access this page returned a 404 error e.g. this page is no-longer usable)

I found even a webpage in Ubuntu Help which claimed to explain how to properly install and configure the RTL8187B wireless driver on which is below:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Device/RealtekRTL8187b

Even the Ubuntu help instructions were pointing me to the broken cuervo's website URL

None of the driver archives rtl8187b-modified-dist.tar.gz and rl8187b-modified-804.tar.gz that was supposed to make the Toshiba L40 realtek wireless to work out, after compiling and installing the drivers from source worked out …

Both archives produced plenty of error messages and it seems on newer kernels like the one on this notebook:

To finally load the Windows XP RTL8187B driver on the Ubuntu I used again ndiswrapper:

root@ubuntu:~# ndiswrapper -m

Further on I used the ndisgtk graphical ndiswrapper interface to once again test if the Windows driver is working on the Ubuntu and it seemed like it is working, however still my wicd was unable to find any wireless network ….

There were many online documentation which claimed that the driver for rtl8187b works out of the box on newer kernel releases (kernel versions > 2.6.24)

Finally I found out there is a driver which is a default one with the Ubuntu e.g. rtl8187.ko , I proceeded and loaded the module:

root@ubuntu:~# modprobe rtl8187

I also decided to check out if the hardware switch button of the Toshiba Satellite L40 notebook is not switched off and guess what ?! The Wireless ON/OFF button was switched OFF!!! OMG …

I switched on the button and wicd immediately started showing up the wireless networks …

To make the rtl8187 module load on Ubuntu boot up, I had to issue the command:

root@ubuntu:~# echo 'rtl8187' >> /etc/modules

Voila after all this struggle the wireless card is working now, it's sad I had to loose about 10 hours of time until I come with the simple solution of using the default provided ubuntu driver rtl8187 , what is strange is how comes that it does not load up automatically.

In my experience with many network Internet Service Providers by so far I’ve encountered a lot of DNS oddities and therefore surfing (web) and mail slowness.

It’s sometimes very irritating especially in cases, when I use my internet over Wireless public or university wireless networks. In principle many of the Wireless routers which distribute the internet especially in organizations are badly configured and the slowness with DNS resolvings is an absolute classic. If you haven’t encountered that slowness in opening web pages when connected from your University’s canteen, whether it’s fill with people for the lunch break, then I should say you’re really lucky!

My personal experience with this bad configured devices DNS services has been quite negative and every now and then I use to set and use public DNS servers like OpenDNS and Google DNS

Very often when I connect to a wireless network with my notebook running Debian Linux and the internet is too slow in opening pages I automatically set the Google or OpenDNS servers as a default DNS IP resolving servers.

1. DNS IP addresses of Google Public DNS are:

8.8.8.7 and 8.8.8.8

2. OpenDNS Public DNS servers has the IP addresses of:

208.67.222.222 208.67.222.220

I do set up and use the upper public DNS services addresses via the commands:

I first create backu pof my resolv.conf under the name resolv.conf.orig just to make sure I can revert back to my old DNSes if I need them at some point.

If you prefer to use the OpenDNS services for some let’s say privacy reasons, you do it in the same manner as in the above commands, you only change the IP addresses. 4. Configure and use the OpenDNS public DNS services

The other primary concern is related to your SECURITY and a PRIVACY by using Public DNS networks, you risk that your Public DNS provider might use some DNS spoof techniques to mislead you and resolve you common domain names which usually resolve to let’s say 1.1.1.1 to let’s say 1.5.5.10

Even though this kind of practices on a side of a public DNS provider is not a likely scenario the possible implications of Public DNS providers using DNS forgery to fool you about domain names locations is a very serious issue.

As public DNS providers does contain again the good old philosophy of cloud computing embedded in themselves and they strive to become some kind of a standard which people might vote to adopt and use, the future implications of a wide adoption of Public DNS servers might be a terrible thing on internet users privacy!!!

Just think about a future scenario where we users of the Internet are forced to use a number of public DNS servers in order to use the Internet! Usually a very huge companies are possessing the Public DNS services and do pay for the tech equipment required for building up the cluster clouds which provide the DNS services and therefore, if in the short future public DNS becomes a fashion and (God forbid!) a standard which shifts up the regular ISP DNS servers to resolve domains to IPs then it will be terrible.

The corporations which does own the Public DNS service/s might have a direct control over filtering and censoling information posted on any website on the internet. Even worser if the world decides to adopt public DNS services somewhere in the future this means that large corporations owning the open dns cluster or clusters will be able to check each and every resolving made by any user on the net. If you think closely such an information possessed by a company is not the best thing we want.

So let me close up this article, I’m not a fan and an evangelist who preaches the use of Public DNS services. Right on Contrary I do honestly hate the idea behind public DNS. Nevertheless apart from my personal opinion I’m a practical person and using the public DNS servers every now and then when this will accelerate my access to the internet is still an option I do enjoy.

Maybe it’s time for a free software project (a tor like), which will provide users with an OpenDNS alternative which will run on hobbyist computers around the globe (just like with tor).

What’s rather funny is that the loud name OpenDNS is a big lie in reality OpenDNS is not opened it’s a company owned closed source service 😉

Below are some valuable advices on Wireless Access Point initial install and configuration to better off your Wireless connection.It’s worthy to note that the 2.4 GHz

Wi-Fi signal range is divided into a number of smaller bands or “channels,” similar to television channels. I decided to run my wireless on channel 12 since this there was no other wireless routers operating on that frequency, though most routers are preconfigured to spread it’s signal on channel 6.

There is a difference in channels available for setup for 802.11b and 802.11g wireless networks in the United States and the European Union. In the USA the wireless channels available are from (1 to 11) whether in the EU it’s in the range of (1-13). Each of the Wireless channels run on a different frequency.

The lower the number of the channel is the lowest the radiating frequence band on which data is transmitted .Subsequently, increasing the channel increases the frequency slightly. Therefore the higher the channel you select on your AP the lesser the overlap with other devices running on the same channel and thus the lesser the possibility to overlap and interference. It’s quite likely that you experience problems, if you use the default wireless channel which is 6. If that’s the case it’s recommended to use either channel 1 or channel 11. In case of interference, i.e. overlap with other wireless networks, cellphones etc., there are 2 possible ways to approach the situation. In case of smaller interference, any change in channel on which there is no wireless device running could fix it up. The second way is to choose a wireless channel for your router in between 1,6 or 11 in (The USA) or 1,7,13 in Europe. Up to 3 networks can run on the same space with minimum interference, therefore it would be a wise idea to check the list of wireless routers in your and check if there are others running on the same frequency. As I mentioned in the beginning of the post I initially started running my wireless on channel 12, however after I discovered it is recommended to run your wireless router either on channel 1 7 or 13 in Europe I switched my D-Link DI-524 wireless router to transmit it’s signal on Channel 13.

I should testify that after changing the wireless channel, there was quite an improvement in my wireless connection.For instance before I change to Channel 13 (when my wireless internet was still streamed on channel 12) my wireless had constantly issues with disconnects because of low wireless signal.

Back then My wireless located physically in like 35 meters away set in another room, I can see my wireless router hardly connected on like 35%, changing to channel 13 enhanced my connection to the current 60% wireless router availability.

It’s also an interesting fact that Opened Wireless networks had better network thoroughput, so if you’re living in a house with a neighbors a bit distant from your place then you might consider it as a good idea to completely wipe out Wireless Router security encryption and abandon the use of WEP or WPA network encryption.

In case if all of the above is not working for you, you might consider take a close look at your Wireless Wireless LAN pc card and see if there are no any kind of bumps there. Another really interesting fact to know is that many people here in Bulgaria tend to configure there Wireless Access Points on channels either 1,6 or 11 which is quite inadequate considering that we’re in the EU and we should use a wireless channel between 1, 7 or 13 as prescribed for EU citizens.

Another thing not to forget is to place your wireless in a good way and prevent it from interferences with other computer equipment. For example keep the router at least few meters away from PC equipment, printers, scanners, cellphones, microwaves. Also try to put your wireless router on some kind of central place in your home, if you want to have the wireless signal all around your place.

At my place I have a microwave in the Kitchen which is sometimes an obstacle for the Wireless signal to flow properly to my notebook, fortunately this kind of interference happens rare (only when the Microwove is used to warm-up food etc.).Upgrading 802.11b wireless card / router to a better one as 802.11g is a wise idea too. 802.11g are said to be like 5 times faster than 802.11b.

You can expect 802.11b wireless network to transfer maximum between 2-5 Mbp/s whether 802.11g is claimed to transfer at approximately (12 to 23 Mbp/s). If even though the above prescriptions there is no wireless signal at some remote place at your home, you might consider adding a wireless repeater or change the AP router antenna.

By default wireless Routers are designed to be omni-directional (in other terms they broadcast the wireless signal all around the place. Thus is quite unhandy if you intend to use your Wireless net only in certain room or location at your place. If that’s the case for you, you might consider upgrading to a hi-gain antenna that will focus the wireless signal to an exact direction. Let me close this article with a small diagram taken from the net which illustrates a good router placement that will enable you to have a wwireless connection all over your place.